The episode begins with brand new step-siblings Gretchen and Clarke Allen being dropped off in the middle of some bum-fuck nowhere swamp, supposedly where Gretchen’s grandparents live [Lol why are they not dropped off at the house?]. Grandma Rose and Grandpa Eddie were supposed to pick them up from the airport, but apparently they’re pretty forgetful [Who dropped them off? It didn’t look like a taxi Who paid for it?]. Clarke immediately starts complaining about his allergies and their surroundings, but Gretchen seems more like a cool, casual gal [As well as stylish! Love the hat and sunglasses combo].
There’s no sign of the house they’re supposed to be staying at [Again, why didn’t their ride dump them at the house?], but luckily there’s a sign pointing them in the direction of Rose’s Red Hot Gumbo stand, so they head in that direction as Gretchen explains to Clarke what a gumbo is [Besides a fun word to say]:
Gretchen: It’s Grandma’s specialty. It’s kind of like a thick soup.
Clarke: So why doesn’t she just call it soup?
Gretchen: Because it’s called gumbo!
[Thanks, Gretchen. Great explanation]. They arrive at Grandma and Grandpa’s ramshackle-looking mansion and as they knock on the door, the hear a mighty growl from somewhere in the swamp that Gretchen suggests is just a frog.
Nobody answers the door, and after another growl from the swamp, they let themselves into the unlocked house. They search upstairs for the grandparents while arguing about how Gretchen’s dad begged Clarke’s mother to marry him [These two do not like each other], and Grandma Rose suddenly appears just as they’re about to investigate a certain room. She takes them downstairs for gumbo and as they walk off, we see that the kids almost stumbled upon a monster under a sheet on a table inside the room.
The gumbo is a bit spicy for the kids [White people, am I right?] and as Rose makes small talk, Clarke makes no attempt to hide his discontent at being here [Rude little shit], but Gretchen is all sugar and spice, complimenting Grandma’s chicken gumbo. Grandpa Eddie then enters to correct her, because it’s not chicken at all, but gator [No vegans in this house]! He’d been out hunting, but the zany old man forgot to pack his bullets! He was also responsible for picking them up from the airport, which he seems to think he wasn’t aware of to begin with [Maybe he’s got dementia :(].
As the grandparents join in the meal, some more weird growls are heard somewhere in the swamp, so Eddie explains to an an anxious Clarke [Or Craig, if you have poor memory like Rose and Eddie] that it’s just swamp gas [Stinky, stinky]. Gretchen mocks Clarke as she explains to the grandparents that he “thought it was a giant frog or something” [Bitch, you’re the one that said that?], which gets a laugh around the table. Clarke, however, insists it’s a genuine possibility and as the grandparents grow visibly uneasy, he starts monologuing about how maybe something out there has evolved over time [I guess he’s an atheist!] and might be crawling toward the house right now, “hungry for human flesh.”
Gretchen is woken by the sounds of the swamp that night and gets up for a glass of water, but yet another growl makes her turn around and listen closely. She hasn’t moved away from her bedroom door, so I’m super confused when the grandparents suddenly appear to tell her she won’t find water in there because it’s just a storage room full of “old storage things” [I guess she’s supposed to have been listening at the door concealing the monster, but she definitely isn’t near that door?]. They tell her it’s too dangerous for her and Clarke to explore, because things might fall over and it wouldn’t be nice to be crushed by “an old storage thing” [Hahaha good save, guys].
The next morning, Clarke scares Gretchen and runs off, and as she heads up another staircase to find him, she finds that there’s no floor at the top [What the hell is the point of that]! She continues her search elsewhere and hears a noise from the alleged storage room, and believing Clarke to be hiding in there she heads in herself. Of course there’s no Clarke, but she does find the monster, which looks like some chicken-dinosaur thing, lying motionless under the sheet.
She flees in terror and finds Clarke, alerting him to the swamp monster in the room. He doesn’t believe her and heads in to check it out himself, but it’s mysteriously disappeared [Where could it possibly have even gone?]! Through the window, the kids notice Rose and Eddie escaping on a motorbike with a sidecar [Hahaha cute]. The monster suddenly appears behind them in all it rubber glory [Props for not being lame CGI, though!].
The monster chases them through the house, and Gretchen gets the bright idea to lead it up the stairs to nowhere, where they latch onto the other side of the railing while the monster tumbles over the edge. They head back downstairs, wondering why the grandparents would just leave them alone with that thing and not tell them, and soon realise they’ve been locked inside the house [Apparently there’s no windows downstairs?].
Clarke reckons Rose and Eddie did it on purpose to feed them to the monster, and eventually Gretchen finds an envelope with a note they’d left behind explaining they had to go into town for an important errand but will return soon, also warning them to stay out of the dangerous storage room [Why would they lock the kids in though? Why don’t these doors unlock from the inside?].
Gretchen theorises that Grandpa Eddie shot the monster while hunting and brought it back to the house believing it was dead, and then it was forgotten about [Why would they warn you away from the room every five seconds if they’d forgotten about the monster, though?]. And then the monster appears again, still alive after it’s fall, and the kids lock themselves in the kitchen as it tries to break through the door.
Gretchen gets another bright idea that involves adding absolutely every food item they can find into the pot of gumbo on the stove. They then hide in the pantry as the dinosaur-chicken thing breaks into the kitchen and helps itself to the pot of gumbo. It seems to like it, but pretty soon it starts smoking from the mouth and falls down, apparently dead for a third time.
Gretchen wants to give it a nudge to make sure, but Clarke stops her because he just wants to leave [You’re an idiot, Clarke], so they head down to the cellar [Following another idea from Gretchen], hoping to find an exit down there. They find a coal chute, but it’s too high for them to reach and they quickly start arguing over whose fault it is that the monster came after them.
Of course, the monster isn’t dead and is drawn down to the cellar after them, so Clarke bravely gives Gretchen a boost up to the chute’s opening as the monster closes in on him [They went from hating each other to caring about each other real quick here]. He’s too short for Gretchen to reach him from above to pull him up, so the monster clamps its mouth around his arm for a little snack [!!!].
Before it can tear off a limb, though, it releases Clarke and has a sneezing fit before dropping dead and promptly exploding [Lol what]. Satisfied that DinoChicken is finally dead now that they’re covered in it’s guts [Which is basically green slime lol], the kids escape from the house and realise that the monster must have been allergic to Clarke [Or humans in general? I don’t know]. Now bonded over their shared trauma, Clarke apologises for his behaviour and they both acknowledge each other as siblings.
They then decide to check the note Rose and Eddie left again and notice that there’s something written on the back [What, no ‘please turn over’ or anything on the front?] – the grandparents explain how Grandpa shot a monster and as long as it’s not disturbed, they’ll be fine [So did the grandparents think it was dead or? It was laying motionless under a blanket for like a whole day and night, so it seemed dead. But then why would they write on the note that it’ll be fine as long as they don’t disturb it?].
Anyway, they didn’t tell the kids because they didn’t want to scare them [How sweet]. They locked the kids inside just in case there are more monsters outside, and the note ends with a final warning – “Whatever happens, don’t go out to the swamp after dark.” And with that, it gets dark within like five seconds and the episode ends as the kids stand there like idiots, while monster growling in the background [Can they get back up the coal chute at all?].
Final thoughts
I enjoyed this one! It felt fast-paced even though nothing really happened until halfway through, but it was fun to have a classic monster on the loose scenario. I remember in the book the monster was like, a gorilla with a crocodile head or something, so i’m glad they switched up the design because with this budget, I can only imagine it’d look worse than the weird dinosaur-chicken thing we got instead.
It would have been nice to see more or Rose and Eddie too, they were pretty quirky and fun! It’s strange that they chose to leave the kids alone though. Why wound’t one of them just stay? Clarke was kind of annoying but Gretchen was cool. I can appreciate the ambiguous ending, too, although if all the other monsters are allergic to Clarke too, they’re probably pretty safe.
There’s worse ways to waste 20 minutes, so 54 staircases that lead to nothing at all out of 67.
